Francis Joseph Spellman (May 4, 1889 – December 2, 1967) was an AmericanCardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1939 he was appointed both Archbishop of New York and "Apostolic Vicar" in charge of pastoral services to Roman Catholic members of the U.S. armed forces, posts which he held until his death 28 years later. He was promoted to Cardinal in 1946. In post World War II America, he was a fervent rightwing opinion leader: supporter of Joseph McCarthy, pioneering proponent of going to war in Vietnam, adversary against labor unionism among lay employees of the church, critic of sexual candor in mainstream American cinema. In church dogma and politics, he opposed the liberalizations of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), declaring, "No change will get past the Statue of Liberty". Among the reforms he opposed was recitation of Mass in languages other than Latin (vernacular Mass).

Priesthood

Spellman was ordained a priest by Patriarch Giuseppe Ceppetelli on May 14, 1916.[4] Upon his return to the United States, he did pastoral work in the Archdiocese of Boston. Cardinal O'Connell, who had earlier sent Spellman to Rome, took an apparent dislike to the young priest.[1] O'Connell referred to him as a "little popinjay" and later said, "Francis epitomizes what happens to a bookkeeper when you teach him how to read."[5] Spellman served as a chaplain at St. Clement's Home, an institution for elderly women, before becoming a curate at All Saints Church in Roxbury.[1]

As late as June 1936, polls gave President Roosevelt at best a 50 percent chance of reelection, due largely to the nightly, national radio attacks by Father Coughlin of Detroit. Spellman arranged with Joseph Kennedy to finance a visit by Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli. Spellman and Pacelli visited each major Catholic population center. Cardinal Pacelli gagged Father Coughlin. The result of their efforts was the "landslide vote" for Roosevelt in November 1936. Rose Kennedy bluntly asked Roosevelt for Joe's appointment as ambassador to England's Court of St. James's. Pacelli requested a full American ambassador to the Vatican, but the best Roosevelt could do was a "personal envoy". Spellman, by this political maneuver, prevailed over the man who prevented him from becoming a U.S. Navy chaplain in 1917.

Following his ascension to New York, Spellman also became a close confidante of President Roosevelt.[1] During World War II, he was chosen by Roosevelt to act as the latter's agent and visit Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in 1943, visiting a total of 16 countries in four months.[11] As archbishop and military vicar, he would have greater freedom than official diplomats.[1] Spellman also acted as a liaison between Pius XII and Roosevelt in the Pope's attempts to have Rome declared an open city and save it from the relentless bombing other European capitals suffered and risk potentially destroying Rome's historical sites and ruins, including Vatican City. In 1946, he received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".

Spellman denounced the efforts of Rep.Graham Barden to provide federal funding only to public schools as "a craven crusade of religious prejudice against Catholic children",[15] even calling Barden himself an "apostle of bigotry".[16] The Cardinal engaged later in a heated public dispute with former First LadyEleanor Roosevelt in 1949 when she expressed her opposition to providing federal funding to parochial schools in her column, My Day.[16] In response, Spellman accusing her of anti-Catholicism and called her column a "[document] of discrimination unworthy of an American mother".[16] He eventually met with her at her Hyde Park home to quell the dispute.

Spellman was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War, to the extent that the conflict became known as "Spelly's War" and the Cardinal as the "Bob Hope of the clergy".[1] He met Ngo Dinh Diem in 1950 and, favorably impressed by his strongly Catholic and anti-Communist views, promoted his career; however, he disassociated from Diem before the latter's assassination in 1963.[1] Fearful of Communist gains in Vietnam, Spellman had urged American intervention since late 1954,[1] but by the 1960s his views were strongly criticized by antiwar activists and even his fellow religious leaders.

When Paul VI visited the United States in October 1965, he indirectly rebuked Spellman's hawkish stance by pleading for peace before the United Nations. A group of college students protested outside his residence in December 1965 for suppressing antiwar priests, and he later spent that year's Christmas with troops in South Vietnam.[1] While in Vietnam, Spellman quoted Stephen Decatur in declaring, "My country, may it always be right, but right or wrong, my country".[1] He also described Vietnam as a "war for civilization" and "Christ's war against the Vietcong and the people of North Vietnam".[1] One priest accused Spellman of "[blessing] the guns which the pope is begging us to put down".[12] In January 1967, antiwar protestors disrupted a Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.[21] His support for Vietnam, along with his opposition to Church reform, greatly undermined Spellman's clout within the Church and country.[1]

Later life

In 1966, Spellman offered his resignation to Pope Paul after the latter requested that bishops over 75 retire, but Paul asked him to remain in his post.[23] He led his archdiocese through an extensive period of building the Catholic infrastructure, particularly the construction of numerous churches, schools, and hospitals. He consolidated all parish building programs into his own hands, thereby getting better interest rates from bankers, and convinced Pius XII of the need to internationalize the Vatican's Italy-centered investments after World War II; for his financial skill, he was sometimes called "Cardinal Moneybags".[24]

Homosexuality

John Cooney, one of Spellman's biographers, cited four interviewees who stated that Spellman was homosexual. While Cooney's book offered no direct proof, Cooney was convinced of the veracity of the claims. "I talked to many priests who worked for Spellman and they were incensed, dismayed and angered by his conduct."

Journalist Michelangelo Signorile, who describes Spellman as "one of the most notorious, powerful and sexually voracious homosexuals in the American Catholic Church's history",[26] reported that Cooney's manuscript, The American Pope, initially contained interviews with several people with personal knowledge of Spellman's homosexuality, including researcher and historian C. A. Tripp. According to Signorile, the church pressured Cooney's publisher, Times Books, to reduce the four pages discussing Spellman's sexuality to a single paragraph.[26] There is a report that during World War II Spellman was carrying on a relationship with a male member of the chorus in the Broadway revue One Touch of Venus.[27] Monsignor Eugene V. Clark, Spellman's personal secretary of 15 years, asserted that the allegations were "utterly ridiculous and preposterous."[28]